Survival Tactics
by Komodo13
Summary: Michael Burnham and Keyla Detmer are sent on a top-secret mission for Starfleet Intelligence, but a Klingon attack ruins their plan and strands them on a poisoned world. Now, fighting for survival and with no one to rely on but each other, Michael and Keyla must confront their feelings for one another and the lingering pain from the last mission of the USS Shenzhou...
1. Chapter 1

This is Why They Invented Doorbells

 _Omigod!"_

The word, shrill-almost like a shriek—was launched like a dart through Michael Burnham's brain, and it added to that first millisecond of confusion, when the scene unfolded before her but her brain struggled to catch up, to make sense of it. Even when the two forms scrambled in a blur of pale, exposed flesh and a great swoop of an blanket pulled up over the naked bodies, Burnham's mind was still puzzling over the details.

The door to her quarters had opened, and there, to her three o'clock, was Tilly in her bunk…

…except Tilly was naked, head thrown back, eyes clamped shut, mouth contorted into a cry of pleasure. Burnham took in the sight, registered the bright pink of her small nipples—pert and erect on the heavy, white breasts—and the long ivory stretch of her legs, dotted with freckles, and slightly spread just enough to accommodate Keyla Detmer's hand.

Detmer: mismatched blue eyes flashing at the intrusion, she was also naked, her face pressed into the veil of fire that was the cascade of Tilly's hair, her own body nearly as pale as Tilly's, but leaner, more taut, the breasts smaller and upturned and still flushed by the touch of a mouth.

"Omigod!" Tilly said, burrowing into the thin protection of the blanket. Detmer didn't try to hide her nudity, but instead straightened up and fixed Burnham with a challenging look.

"I'm…I'm sorry…I'll come back…I'll be back sometime later," she stammered, her composure collapsing like a tower made of straw. She backed out of the room. "I'll knock…When I come back I'll knock…"

Mercifully, the door to quarters shut, and Burnham took a deep breath, tried to blink the image away. She wondered if she could successfully open an airlock and climb inside before the sensors triggered a lockdown...

 _"Michael Burnham to the Captain's ready room."_ Saru's voice warbled out of a comm panel beside the door. Burnham punched it.

"On my way," she answered. She silently thanked every deity that ever existed for the distraction.


	2. Chapter 2

_The Mission_

Captain Lorca's ready room was characteristically dimly-lit when Burnham was admitted inside, but this time it served purpose beyond simply sparing the captain the pain of his injuries. It served to enhance the detail on the holographic Starfleet officer who "stood" off to the left of Lorca's imperious standing-desk.

"Ah, Burnham, you're here, great." Lorca said with his characteristic brusqueness and general lack of warmth. "This is Commander Sorensen, Starfleet Intelligence. He'd like a word." Burnham thought she detected something in Lorca's voice when he identified Soernesen's division, like he'd just tasted something sour.

She faced the hologram. "Commander," she gave a nod of respect. Sorensen was a blandly handsome middle-aged man, Terran, with blond/brown hair cropped close to scalp to offset the effects of incipient male-pattern baldness. He apparently didn't want to use follicular-regeneration techniques or just liked the way it looked. Either way, it suited him. It matched the sharpness of his eyes—eyes, Burnham thought, suited to detecting secrets, identifying weaknesses, and telling nothing.

Sorensen's image shifted and Burnham saw the creases form in his uniform—he must have been transmitting from a starbase, she thought, holo-transmissions used hellacious amount of energy and bandwidth, which is why starships rarely used them except for special circumstances or flag officers.

"So how do I address you?" he asked. "Convict Burnham? Mutineer Burnham? I must admit I'm at a loss."

"Aboard my ship she's Specialist Burnham," Lorca said sharply. "You may address her as such."

Sorensen cocked his head as if deigning to ignore a crazy notion. "Very well, Captain. Specialist Burnham, you served aboard the _USS Shenzhou_ on stardate 4576.45, when you mapped a distant system around Noviani Major, correct?"

"I did, sir," Burnham said, her thoughts briefly journeying down the slender, delicate thread of memory to happier times, better times. Tromping through a piney forest with an away team hauling a truly stupid amount of scientific gear, buzzing and exclaiming at every new finding—every plant and rock and animal. A time when she was a scientists, not a soldier.

A time when Captain Georgiou was alive.

"Good. We'll need your cartographic skills."

"The Commander has a mission he'd like your help with," Lorca said archly. "Actually, all of our help with."

"Indeed," Sorensen said casually, clearly not caring about Lorca's attitude toward him or his mission. "Starfleet Intelligence has an asset on Noviani-7, the only habitable planet, and—not coincidentally, a major source of slave labor for the Klingon Empire."

"Slave labor?" Burnham recalled the Novianians, a humanoid race with basic warp capability, but a society clamped in a bear-trap of politics and competing clans, which barely allowed them to construct starships, let alone explore the galaxy. The Shenzhou had done a basic First Contact greeting, but, at the behest of Starfleet's Xenology and Diplomacy Division, declined to promote the Novianians to Stage Two, which would have included establishment of formal diplomatic relations. Instead, they'd given them restricted access to the Federation communication net, in case they ever wanted to petition for Stage Two consideration. Basically, here's our card, give us a call when you get your issues straightened out.

"Empires don't build themselves, Burnham," Lorca said slightly condescendingly. "I'm reasonably certain the Klingons don't pay minimum wage and offer medical coverage."

"Yes sir," Burnham let the comment pass. She was used to indignity. "I just didn't realize Noviani was that close to Klingon space."

"It's not," Sorensen said. "They use Orion slavers who are sanctioned by the ruling clan. Noviani-7 experienced something like a world war about two years after you made First Contact—relax, Specialist, your visit didn't cause it. It was brewing for a while, and our best guess is that one of the Klingon houses propped up one of the clans and helped them lay waste to planet. Now, the place is little more than a strip-mine for the Klingon Empire."

"If the Klingons lean so heavily on this planet, why haven't they just annexed it," Lorca asked.

Sorensen shrugged. "Too much like work? The place is basically poisonous now. The atmosphere is a soup of toxins. And they can get the resources and slave labor on the cheap, so why bother committing the resources to invading and holding a planet that's going to kill all your warriors and administrators anyway. That's our guess anyway, but we really can't claim to understand much about the Klingon Empire, so take it was a grain of salt."

"Who is this asset?" Burnham asked.

"Sorry, Specialist, that's on a need-to-know basis."

"And I need to know," Lorca said reproachfully. "Especially if you're sending my ship and people into danger."

The definition on the projection was high enough that Burnham could see Sorensen debating whether or not to lower his head and lock horns over the matter and make the decision that it wasn't worth it. "All right. Here he is." A second holo-projection appeared, this one showing the shoulders and head of a humanoid being Burnham recognized as a Novianian. "His name is Conn'klyn. He's a member of the ruling clan—hence the understated forehead ridges."

"And what makes him so special?" Lorca demanded.

"He's…kind of an HR rep for the major trafficking operation out of the capital city. He assess needs, tries to find the bodies to fill them."

"This man is a slave-trader?" Burnham asked before she could stop herself, incredulity sharpening her voice like a fishhook.

"A part of a network," Sorensen shrugged.

"Hang on," Lorca snapped. "You want me take my crew within spitting distance of a Klingon fleet to rescue some damn slaver? Are you out of your mind, Commander?"

Now, Burnham saw, the head was down, the horns pointed, and Sorensen was pawing the ground. "I'm sorry you don't approve, Captain—I truly am—but intelligence requires us having assets who can provide it. And by definition, those assets tend not be terribly savory characters. Now, I can see where from the sterile corridors of your fancy starships you'd perhaps rather we deal with, I dunno, say the Red Cross or Lions Club. We'd like that, too. Problem is, they don't know anything."

Sorensen's body had tensed and his face was a mask of disdain. "Now, Conn'klyn's job gives him safe access to various Klingon facilities—shipyards, dilithium mines, colonies—this is information we need to prosecute this war. He even claims to have access to the shipyard where they fit the invisibility devices on Klingon starships."

"And you believe him?" Lorca asked doubtfully.

"On the last point? Not really. Assets are always selling more sizzle than steak. It's how they stay alive. Still, the rest of his info is valuable, and there's no telling what he knows that he just doesn't realize is important."

"I don't understand," Burnham said. "Why extract him? Surely you must have some way to pass communications back and forth."

"He wants to come in. And, given that the war has heated up, I can see why."

"And you're letting him?" Lorca asked.

"Assets tend to be more willing to work with you when they know won't abandon them when they become inconvenient," Sorensen replied sarcastically.

"All right," Lorca said irritably. "What do you need from us?"

"We'll need you to use that super-dooper fungus engine to materialize above the planet. Then, Burnham can go in—probably an aerial insertion, given the polaran concentration in atmosphere—meet Conn'klyn and get him out of there. I'm transmitting the coordinates of the meet site. It'll be deep in the forest on the northern continent outside a mining facility. Conn'klyn will be standing by at the facility, waiting for your signal." If everything goes as planned, Captain, it shouldn't keep you out of the war for more than an hour or two."

"Well," Lorca said tightly, "We can certainly spare that for our cousins in Intel. I'll put together a security team-"

"Just Burnham," Sorensen cut him off.

"Now wait a minute, commander…"

"Number one, it'll spook Conn'klyn. Number two, well, we can't risk that level of exposure if this thing goes sideways. Captain, you're just going to have to trust me on this. We've consulted with Starfleet Security on this and they agree that the only acceptable op plan has one, and only one, Starfleet officer going in."

A muscle in Lorca's jaw twitched. "Very well, commander. Burnham it is."

Sorensen nodded, then faced Burnham. She tried to read his gaze, but couldn't. She expected disdain, contempt, but saw something else. It was blackness, an infinite depth, as if his eyes were dual abysses. It might have been the holo-projector, she thought, but still couldn't shake the feeling he was silently and intensely assessing her for some purpose he wasn't willing to share.


	3. Chapter 3

_God Said, "Not so fast…"_

"Starfleet Intelligence," Lorca scoffed when Sorensen's holographic shade vaporized from his ready room. "Don't get me wrong, I understand the necessity and value of their work, but that doesn't mean I want to see it, let alone be a part of it."

 _And yet you did_ , Burnham thought, _and quite easily._ She couldn't think an appropriate comment so she remained silent.

"I'm sorry, Burnham. I especially don't like the idea of sending you into the dragon's teeth."

"If you refused, would Starfleet Command support your decision?"

Lorca shook his head. "Sorensen wouldn't have made the call if he didn't know that Command would back his play. Anything he said that sounded like a request was purely theater."

"Then it's best I execute this operation as quickly as possible," Burnham said. "Get this over with quickly and make everyone happy."

"I like where you're head is at, Burnham," Lorca said as he plucked a fortune cookie from the wooden bowl perched at the starboard edge of his desk and began slowly shattering it. "But I'm not ending you down there alone. "If that desk-rider thinks I'm not taking appropriate precautions to safeguard my crewmember, then he better get his nose out of the computer screen. Detmer will go with you."

Burham felt her stomach flip. "Sir?"

"If they're not going to authorize a security team, I can at least make sure you have an experienced pilot flying you in and out. Plus you got an extra set of eyes to watch your back."

"I see," Burnham said, and regretted it immediately. It would have been a perfectly appropriate response to a Vulcan, but—and she often forgot this—humans were far better at perceiving the emotions which hid behind even the most inncousous comments. Lorca was no exception.

"Is there a problem, Burnham?" he asked.

"No sir."

"I realize you served together on the _Shenzhou_. If either or both of you brought some baggage aboard, I suggest you leave it behind. This is a delicate operation. I need you clear-headed."

"There's no problem, sir," Burnham insisted, hopefully not too forcefully.

"Good," Lorca said, still suspicious. "Go pack a load-out for an extraction mission. I'll brief Detmer."

"Yes sir."

"Dismissed, Specialist Burnham."

Burnham left the ready room, deliberately not looking around the bridge as she did so. She imagined she could hear those deities laughing.


	4. Chapter 4

_Detmer's Karma_

 _Fuck. Me. Sideways._

Keyla Detmer maintained her composure as she left the briefing room, determined to make it back to her quarters before she shouted obscenities and broke the least-valuable thing she owned.

Commander Saru had been his usual vaguely-obsequious self when he explained the mission to her, and Keyla had done her best to nod, show that she understood what was being asked of her, and not to scream at a Universe which seemed determined to have a joke at her expense. Yes, it was a very delicate operation. Yes, she would have to thread a very fine needle to facilitate the insertion and exfil. And yes, she would also have to back up Michael Burnham, since there was no possibility for a security team.

Just the two of them. Oh joy.

At the conclusion of the briefing Saru had stepped out from behind the table and tilted his head in that way he did when he was trying to relate to another species in an unguarded manner. The small gesture and the awkwardness she knew it must have brought him always made her want to hug him for encouragement.

"Lieutenant…Keyla…I understand if you're feeling some…trepidation toward working with Commander Burnham. I confess that it is not always easy for me to serve alongside her, either. We lost so much with the _Shenzhou_ , but you have borne that loss most pronouncedly. "

Keyla turned her head instinctively to hide the damaged side of her face, remembered it was Saru that she was talking to and blushed in embarrassment.

"If you are not comfortable with this assignment, I'm sure I could speak to Captain Lorca…"

"No," Keyla shook her head. "Thank you, Saru, but you don't have to do that for me. It's just a few hours in a shuttlecraft."

Saru blinked his large, turquoise eyes, and his lipless, fishlike mouth twisted into his own approximation of a smile. "You are a good officer, Lieutenant Detmer."

And for a moment, Keyla felt a stab of nostalgia for the past aboard the _Shenzhou_ , not so long gone, but forever out of reach, when they were a family.


	5. Chapter 5

_Not Awkward At All_

Burnham realized too late that she could probably have drawn out field gear from the quartermaster and completely avoided returning to her quarters, with too late being about the time Tilly tiptoed into the small room as Burnham stuffed equipment into her ruck.

"Um…hi?"

"Tilly," Burnham said neutrally. _Pleasedon'tsayanythingaboutyouandKeylahavingsex…_

"So, you wanna talk about what happened earlier, or…you know, I kind of think we should talk about it. Otherwise it's going to be this big… _thing_ between us and everything will be all weird and…"

"Tilly," Burnham said, more sharply than she intended. She took a breath and turned to face her roommate. "Tilly, I owe you an apology." Seeing Tilly's confusion she put up her hands in a _let me speak_ gesture. "No, I do. I should have knocked first. It was MWR night, and I should have considered that you might not leave the event alone."

Tilly blinked several times, her train of thought clearly having been derailed. "I…oh…I…no, it's fine." She laughed a stuttering, cathartic exhale of nervous energy. "You don't have to apologize…"

"I do," Burnham said. "This is a shared living space, and this evening I clearly failed to take that into consideration. It won't happen again."

"It's okay, really! I mean it's no big deal-just a little embarrassing…" Tilly's eyes widened comically, "Kinda killed the mood," she said and laughed nervously again.

"Well, I'm sorry for that."

"I mean, I'm just glad it wasn't weird for you seeing me and Keyla. But then again, you served together on the _Shenzhou_ , so I guess you've probably seen her naked before, right?"

"There wasn't as much nudity on the _Shenzhou_ as you seem to think," Burnham answered dryly, earning another barrage of nervous laughter from Tilly.

"It's so weird," she said, plopping down on her bed and squeezing her shoulders together. "I mean, I was never really into girls before. But then she came over to my table tonight, and we started talking, and doing shots and talking and doing more shots, and she just kept looking at me." Tilly sighed wistfully. "She has the most amazing eyes. I think the cybernetic implant kind of draws your attention to them."

"I'm familiar with her eyes," Burnham said, stuffing an extra pair of socks into her ruck with what was probably undue force.

"Right, so you know what I'm talking about. And all of a sudden, I'm just like, _Wow…she's looking at me. No one but me._ And I thought about how Terran women tend to be a lot more fluid in their sexuality than men, so I figured, _well, I should take that sexual fluidity out for a test drive_ , and we ended up here." Tilly beamed and swung her legs expectantly.

"That's a…very nice story, Tilly. It sounds like it was a good evening."

"It totally was! Any night that ends with a hook-up goes in the win column, right?" Then she rolled onto her side, her legs still hanging off the bed. "And Keyla. _Keyla!_ She's so…I don't know, like a _rock star_ , I guess? I mean, she's a _bridge officer_! That's so amazing!"

Burnham felt an unexpected, inexplicable stab of jealousy and the urge to shout " _I was a First Officer!"_

"Like she's _right there_ where the action is, taking her orders straight from Captain Lorca."

 _I was in command when the captain wasn't on the bridge!_ Burnham shoved a small med kit into her bag. Times like these—the interactions with humans and the irrational feelings they provoked in her—made her want to flee to Vulcan, crawl into an education pod and take computerized exams for a month.

"And a helmsman, which is like, _so_ hot. This whole ship just obeys her touch. She moves her hands and the whole vessel responds…which, hey, me too!"

Burnham jolted upright, the scene of Tilly and Keyla running through her mind, bold and urgent. _I once had to give Keyla a Performance Improvement Citation…and now I know uses a follicle-blocker on her pubic hair._

"Oh…sorry. TMI? I suppose it is. Omigod! She used to report to you. This must be super-weird for you."

Burnham managed a tight smile. "Like I said, it's none of my business."

"Right. So, um, what are you packing for?"

"Captain Lorca is sending me on a mission planetside," Burnham said, her relief at the new topic was almost a physical sensation. "It's part of a Starfleet Intelligence operation."

"Wow," Tilly said. "That sounds dangerous. And you're going alone? You're really brave."

"No, I'm going with someone else." Burnham regretted the words the moment they were audible.

"Who?" Tilly asked.


	6. Chapter 6

_You Just Gotta Walk the Walk_

Keyla secured her gear in the shuttlecraft and began running pre-flights on the little ship. It was almost brand-new, like _Discovery_ herself, and all her systems came up green—a fact that did little to quell her dissatisfaction. _Conestoga_ -class shuttlecraft were powerful, but not quick—Clydesdales, not quarter horses. A _Peregrine_ -class fighter would have been better, faster, and have better armament, but starships typically didn't carry fighters, as they were generally useless in deep space engagements. Keyla checked the burn rate on the impulse decks, and decided she could make this pack animal run if she had to. Still, she hated the panel-interface controls. A strap-on ship like this should have good old-fashioned joysticks.

Ideally, though, this would just be a chauffeur job. She'd fly in while Burnham futzed with her datapad and fly out while Burnham tended to their passenger. Best-case scenario: she'd have to trade maybe a half-dozen sentences with Michael Burnham.

If she were being honest, she'd have to admit she really did bring this whole situation on herself. It wasn't like she didn't know that Sylvia Tilly was Burnham's bunkmate when she noticed her across the blue-lit room, and that may have factored into her "it's-quarter-to-three-there's-no one-in-the-place-'cept-you-and-me" recklessness. True, a chunk of it was due to the fact that her latest dalliance—a Federation Marine that had been hitching ride with his unit to a Forward Operating Base in the Quarless Sector—had come to a messy end. "This is just a _fling_ to you?" he'd wept. "I think we're in different places on this," she'd replied. "I wanted to introduce you to my mom," he'd exclaimed as he scrambled out of her quarters. It had been embarrassing for everyone involved—but mostly for him.

So when Tilly proved receptive to her flirtations she couldn't honestly say that along with the promise of a nice distracting rebound conquest there wasn't also some illicit thrill pulsing in the back of her mind from the possibility of making an aggressive move into Burnham's territory.

But she was reasonably certain that she hadn't considered the possibility that Burnham might walk in on them.

Pity, too, since what Tilly had lacked in experience with other women, she'd more than made up for in enthusiasm. Keyla had come to find that enthusiasm could go a long way in these short-term affairs she'd been experiencing lately. Sex was a nice distraction from war—it was positive and life-affirming amid the world of constant loss they all lived in—and as Grace Dobosu had whispered to her when they parted after their brief reunion, "You're alive until you're dead, Keyla. Never forget which side of the equation you're on." Tilly turned out to be good at reminding her she was alive.

The shuttlecraft's hatch opened with a pneumatic hiss. Keyla steeled herself and didn't look back at it. She heard Burnham climb aboard and stow her gear.

"Hello Keyla," she said tightly and settled into the copilot's seat. "Is everything prepped and ready to launch?"

Keyla tamped down the urge to tell her sit back and shut up. "Just say the word."

"Let's go then."


	7. Chapter 7

_What Fresh Hell is This?_

The shuttlecraft cleared the bay's forcefield, and Burnham felt the slight tremble that went through the ship as it slipped beyond _Discovery_ 's artificial gravity and its own grav-generators kicked in. Keyla piloted it the little craft in a long arc that gave them a breathtaking view of _Discovery_ 's belly—still unblemished and Azteced by her interlocked hull-plates—then the deep, rich black of space, and finally the pink corona Noviani-7's outer atmosphere.

Burnham admired Keyla's skill as a pilot, even as she felt the woman's resentment coming off of her in waves. She wondered if this was a result of her unfortunate interruption or Keyla's general antipathy toward her since the Battle at the Binary Stars.

Her Vulcan upbringing—that ill-fitting garment she wore over her feelings—told her not to care what Keyla thought of her. She likely couldn't change the woman's feelings and whatever conclusion she'd come to about Burnham, so preoccupation with it was both a waste of energy and likely counterproductive. But as with so many of her Vulcan teachings, this too was just barely out of her reach. There were too many memories of their time together on the _Shenzhou_ , when they were crewmates and colleagues and she had Keyla's respect as a commander. Those were hard things to lose

"Locking coordinates into the nav system," Burnham said efficiently. "Should be an easy flight."

"Just let me worry about the flying," Detmer replied without looking at her. "You deal with whoever it is we're picking up. Make sure we don't have sit on the ground any longer than we have to."

Burnham gave a leisurely nod. _Okay, attempt #1 to be civil has failed, what's our tack for attempt #2?_

"Believe me, I don't want to be down there any longer than you do. That mining operation is producing tereon radiation at an insane pace."

"Great, so we'll both be on anti-rad meds after this. Wow, this mission just gets better and better."

"Hopefully a low dose," Burnham said. "If we can extract him within an hour or so."

Detmer didn't answer, just let her fingers play over the console and assiduously avoided looking at Burnham.

 _Oh the hell with it,_ Burnham thought. "Keyla…I want to apologize about intruding on you and Tilly. That was inconsiderate of me."

Detmer stared through the canopy at an undefined point in space and pursed her lips. "You might consider knocking next time," she remarked dryly.

"Definitely. I guess I'm a little unused to living with a bunkmate, but Tilly and I can both accommodate one another, and…"

"What? You didn't have a cellmate in prison? Or you just weren't getting that much action?"

Burnham felt the sting of that one. Very well, if the gloves were coming off…

"Keyla," she said, "I hope that you'll be…mindful of Tilly's feelings."

"What?" Now Detmer was staring her incredulously. Burnham considered it a win.

"It's just that Tilly doesn't have your… _sophistication_ , when it comes to relationships, and I'm concerned that she's going to get emotionally hurt."

"'Sophistication?'" Detmer gave a harsh laugh. "That is the most diplomatic way anyone has ever found to call me a slut. You're amazing, Burnham."

"That's not—"

"So, I exercise my sexual agency—since, you know, we might be dead tomorrow—and I'm supposed to feel ashamed that I have, what? _Sullied_ myself? Because a woman isn't supposed to enjoy sex? Hey, I guess we're living back in the 20th century again! Let's all inhale carcinogens and stare at our television set screen!"

"That is _not_ what I said!" Burnham's temper flared. "The fact is, Tilly is still very naive in many ways—"

"Tilly is an adult. And the big sister routine is just about feeding your ego, Burnham. The world doesn't need your preternatural wisdom to guide it. You've already made enough of a mess of things."

Burnham's angry reply—half-formed, probably too vicious—was cut off by the whine of the proximity sensor alarm on the shuttlecraft's panel. Burnham checked her readings, felt her blood rush at the red icons appearing on the starmap.

"Klingon birds-of-prey just warped into the system. They've picked us up on their short-range sensors."

"Damn it," Detmer growled. "Our stealthy descent just turned into a power dive. Hang on, I gotta bring is on target…"

The view out the windscreen shifted, space slipping away upwards like a cheap window shade, and the brownish-yellow atmosphere of the planet dominating the view. Burnham turned her attention to the sensor panel in front of her. "It looks like _Discovery_ is engaging the Klingons."

"Was there any doubt?"

The cockpit of the shuttlecraft was suddenly bathed in harsh, red light as a phaser bolt split the atmosphere outside the windscreen.

"Dammit, someone's onto us," Detmer muttered. "Hopefully all this crap in the atmosphere is messing with their targeting sensors..."

Suddenly the little craft shook as it batted by an enormous cat's paw. The lighting went, smothering them in darkness broken, only by the panicked blinking of the panel lights and the cascading sparks and darting flames from aftward. Klaxons wailed like an attention-starved child.

 _"_ _We've been hit!"_ Burnham shouted over the din. _"Not direct, but—"_

 _"_ _It was direct enough!"_

The shuttle began to rock as if on gimbals, the nose dipping forward to meet gravity.

"Damn," Detmer said through gritted teeth. "We're losing power. Couplings must have been burned-out."

"Can we make it to the landing site?"

"We'll reach the ground all right. That's not a problem," Detmer shook her head. "But we're going to lose anti-gravs in about two minutes, and since this craft doesn't have any lift-capable surfaces per se…" She punched in a few more things to the console and spun to face Burnham. "We're going to have to HALA."

Burnham felt jarred. She hadn't performed a High-Altitude/Low-Activation maneuver with an anti-grav harness in years. "Bail out? This far off-target?"

"In about ninety seconds this shuttle becomes a great big rock that we can't steer or stop." She launched herself from her seat and grabbed her pack from its equipment slot. "You wanna live, you jump."

Urgency overrode Burnham's misgivings, and she scrambled out of her seat and pulled on her own pack. She pulled the straps tight enough around her that the ruck felt like a great tick fastening itself to her body, then took the anti-grav harness Detmer held out to her.

"Set it to synch with Harness One. That's mine."

Burnham shrugged into the front-worn harness and strapped the control onto her wrist. "Harness One, synched." She faced Detmer, and for a moment the woman was someone else. Intense. Focused. Professional.

"Let's go."

Burnham nodded her agreement.

Detmer triggered the emergency evac control and the starboard hatch blew outward. Instantly, the interior of the shuttlecraft became a tornado of howling, swirling wind. Detmer didn't hesitate, just threw herself bodily out of the craft and into the infinity of the roiling atmosphere. A moment later, Burnham followed.


	8. Chapter 8

_Planetfall_

 _The dream was always the same: The Sarcophagus Ship, the Klingon ship of the dead-the fetid, musky smell, the dim lighting, the arabesque design to the massive bridge._

 _Georgiou._

 _Burnham watches her captain's melee with T'kuvma, tamping down the sinking feeling that there is no way this will end well. This isn't the way the mission was supposed to go. The captain is outmatched physically by an opponent whose physiology designed him to be superior to her, and who is drunk on youth and fury. She watches from behind what seems to be a pane of glass or a viewscreen—something that allows for visibility, but not contact. She tries to will Georgiou some of the strength she developed living with Vulcan's higher gravity, some of the will she feels to rewrite the past, some of her own fury at how everything turned out._

 _But it all happens anyway._

 _And when Georgiou's eyes widen with sudden horrid realization that she's dead, Burnham wakes up._

Fingers snapping.

"Come back me. Specialist Burnham. Come back to me."

More snapping.

Burnham was aware of laying on the ground. She could feel a chilly wind blowing. She moved her arms and legs, testing joints, looking for sharp pains, but feeling none.

"Burnham…"

She opened her eyes, saw Detmer crouched over her. "Keyla…" she managed, and slowly began sitting up. The world shifted vertiginously.

"You had a nasty landing. I think you suffered an MBTI,"—Burnham struggled for the acronym, then found it: mild traumatic brain injury—"but I gave you a shot of compselene, which should help with the brain-tissue bruising. I don't think you have any broken bones, so that's a good thing."

"Yeah, I don't feel anything broken," Burnham said groggily as she slowly settled into a sitting position. She blinked a few times until her double-vision coalesced into a single image and surveyed their surroundings. They sat in a small clearing that was surrounded by bare and skeletal trees, which, from the look of them, must have once been something akin to Terran fir trees. These, however, were bleached whitish-grey. Detmer looked around at the trees with her.

"Most of them seem to be petrified. Probably not naturally. Must be a by-product of the strip-mining."

"Cycleron radiation," Burnham nodded, feeling a jab of pain shoot through her frontal lobes. "It calcifies organic tissue."

"Super," Detmer said grimly. "We get to turn to statues."

"We'll die of the toxins in the atmosphere first," Burnham said. "The mining machinery uses focused beams of tereon radiation to burrow into the ground, but the extraction and refinement process causes toxic levels of pollutants."

The blood went out of Detmer's face as she laid out the contents of her med kit. "There's nothing in here for that. This is all basic field-injury stuff—wounds, broken bones, some anti-toxins for venomous plants or animals…"

"No, we'd need a sickbay for proper treatment. Is there any chance of salvaging anything from the shuttlecraft?"

Detmer shook her head. "I watched it come down, must have been twenty klicks from here. Whatever's left is in pieces."

Burnham squeezed her eyes closed, and fought off a rising ache behind them, then opened them and refocused. "All right, then. What do we have?

Detmer gestured to where their packs sat, leaned up against a wide, calcified tree truck. "We have a standard expedition kit: shelter, heat sticks, some rations, water, one Type-Two phaser, two Type-One phasers, two standard tricorders, and two communicators. Fine, if we were going camping or taking some cadets on an overnight survival primer. In our current circumstances…we're screwed." She let out a shuddering breath.

Burnham picked up a communicator and flipped it open. "Burnham to _Discovery…Discovery_ , do you copy?" She was answered by an unnerving silence.

"I _tried_ that," Detmer said sharply. "For an hour while you were recovering, I tried that. Know what I got? Nothing? Not even static."

Burnham closed the communicator. "The radiation in the atmosphere is probably bouncing the signal back. We need something more powerful." She clipped the communicator to her belt, then picked up a tricorder. She opened the interface, activating the device, and called up the last data synch with the shuttle's computer, then she flipped over to cartographic mode and waiting a moment for the whirring instrument to calculate their location. "Okay…it looks like we're about forty kilometers east of the mining camp where Conn'klyn is located."

"Wait, you still want to try and extract this guy? How? Are we gonna walk him off this planet? I'm sorry, _Specialist_ Burnham, but this mission is over! It's done!"

"Our only way off this planet is at that camp," Burnham replied forcefully. "Conn'klyn communicated regularly with Sorensen. That means he's got comms off this planet. We can probably use whatever he has to contact _Discovery_ and have them put together an exfil."

" _Discovery?"_ Detmer's laughed was just a little too shrill, and Burnham began to realize what she was dealing with. _"Discovery_ is gone. She probably jack-rabbitted out of the system, and that's assuming she survived the Klingon attack. With fucking D'Epiro at the helm, they probably didn't last twenty seconds-!"

 _"_ _Keyla!"_ Burnham snapped. "Keyla, you need to focus. You need to concentrate."

"Don't tell me what to do, _Specialist!_ You're not my ranking officer anymore!"

Burnham put up her hands in what she hoped was a placating gesture. "It's physiological. The adrenaline and endorphins that flooded your system during the evacuation are wearing off. It's making you feel hopeless and overly-emotional."

Detmer threw her look of pure hatred. "I am _not_ overly-emotional. You're just out of your mind."

"Okay," Burnham said, barely holding back the urge to scream at her, to nerve-pinch her into unconsciousness, or just plain break her jaw. "Okay, but we need a plan. We only have three days—four at the most—before we're non-operational from the toxicity of the atmosphere. Now, the sun is going to set in a few hours and the temperature is going to drop. I recommend we start moving now. Otherwise we'll lose time, and we don't have time to spare. But you're right: you're the ranking officer. It's your call to make."

Detmer breathed through her nose, her gaze sliding wildly over their gear. After a few moments, Burnham though she saw something shift in Detmer's features—some greater instinct override, if not overcome, her emotions.

"All right," she said heavily. "Let's move.


	9. Chapter 9

_The Long Haul_

There was no undergrowth to struggle through, but the hardened chunks of calcified stumps and long-fallen branches routinely tripped them up, sending them stumbling into tree trunks as hard as duracrete pillars. With every cloud of petrified dust they produced, Keyla imagined another few minutes shaved off her life.

The sun had settled into a sullen, orange orb squatting on the horizon, and a cutting wind had kicked up, swirling through the petrified forest. Keyla zipped up her mission jacket and hunched in on herself for warmth,

"The temperature's dropped to two-seventy-eight kelvin," Burnham announced unhelpfully.

The wind had kicked up and was beginning to bite. Keyla still wasn't used to how easily her head became cold, now that half her scalp was exposed, and she pulled on the detachable hat that was part of her survival jacket's lining. She was pleased to see this model didn't have the large Starfleet insignia on it that earlier models featured that made the wearer look they were junior cadets.

"There's a water source about a half kilometer south of here. Let's try to make it that far, then we can set up the shelter. It'll be dark by then."

"Good idea," Keyla said neutrally. They'd been walking for the past three hours in a sullen silence, broken occasionally by Burnham's sitreps. If she had been with anyone else, Keyla would have remedied the situation with a quick, but heartfelt, "I'm sorry for falling apart back there," and they would assure her that, hey, it's okay, it happens to everyone, and let me tell you about this one time when I…But she couldn't bring herself to apologize to Burnham.

Not _this_ Burnham.

Year Ago Burnham? Commander Burnham, slightly stiff-necked First Officer of the _USS Shenzhou_ and Number One to Captain Philippa Georgiou? Unquestionably. But that Burnham was lost, left behind at Binary Stars on the field of battle with the crippled wreck of the _Shenzhou_ , the personal effects of the abandoned crew, and the Keyla Detmer who had a full head of hair and two eyes the same color.

So she accepted the uncomfortable silence. It was a reasonable price to pay to hold on to her resentment.

They trudged through the hardened landscape for another forty minutes or so, the wind slashing their exposed skin, the temperature bottoming out in preparation for the night, until they reached a small, but active river.

"That outcropping would give us a nice barrier," Burnham said, pointing to a petrified thicket. Keyla could see how they make a good makeshift brick wall. Burnham scanned the camping area and synched her scans with the shelter's CPU, which then unfolded into a shape that fit the environment, while maximizing interior space.

Inside, the shelter smelled like fresh polymer. Keyla pulled two heat sticks out of her pack and activated in what was roughly the center of the shelter. The sticks glowed and heated up with a chemical reaction contained within a highly-conductive alloy shell. The result was akin to having a campfire without the smoke, and both women sat close to the sticks until the warmth returned to their hands and faces. After a few minutes, the shelter filled with the comforting heat.

"It'll probably frost over tonight," Burnham stated as they unrolled their thermal sleeping bags.

"I guess bathing in the stream is out," Keyla said as she pulled off her boots and uniform. She was suddenly acutely aware of the smell of her body.

"Not unless you want a case of hypothermia."

"Shower-in-a-can, it is, then," she said as she dug around in her ruck, eventually finding two bottles of hygiene spray. She handed one of the bottles to Burnham, and the two of them spent a few minutes applying the cleansing, anti-microbial compound to their bodies and hair, then rubbed it in with the issued disinfecting chamois. When they were done, the polymer scent of the shelter had been overpowered by the tang of disinfectant, making Keyla think of a sickbay.

"I don't guess you brought ingredients for s'mores?" Keyla asked, after molding her ruck into a comfortable sitting mat. She disliked herself to for the comment, but said it mostly to break the silence.

Burnham gave her a quizzical look. "We've got field rations, is that…"

"Never mind," Keyla waved dismissively. "It's a camping reference. Camping food. S'mores. You toast marshmallows over a campfire, then put the gloppy mess on a graham cracker, add a slab of chocolate, then you top it off with another graham cracker. Kids love them."

"My god," Burnham said, "that sounds like the unhealthiest thing in the world."

"It is."

"It's almost like a food designed to be as unhealthy as possible."

"Could be," Keyla agreed. "But they're really delicious."

"You _ate_ those things?" Burnham asked incredulously.

"I've had a few in my time," Keyla said as she ripped open a ration pack and wait for it to heat up. "But my brother, Henryk, was the big camper in the family. He liked to go camping for weeks around Enzklösterle in the Black Forest."

"Is that where you grew up," Burnham asked.

Keyla shook her head. She stirred the contents of her field ration with the supplied all-purpose utensil, then took an exploratory taste. The vitamin-enriched protein paste was flavored to taste like chicken tikka. She could live with that. "No, we grew up in Dusseldorf, but we had grandparents in Stuttgart, which was only about eighty kilometers away."

Burnham nodded and ripped into her own ration pack.

"What'd you get?"

Burnham tested. "Grilled seafood, I think."

"Wanna trade? Mine is spicy, and I know you find human food bland."

Burnham stared at her for a moment as if Keyla had just peered into the depths of her soul. She felt awkward again.

"Sure." They traded rations.

"I did some survival courses on Vulcan," Burnham said. "They aren't much help in our present circumstances, though. It was all desert survival."

"Yeah, s'mores wouldn't have been very popular," Keyla said as she dug into her food, imagined she was back in the small, bamboo restaurant on Villamendhoo Island, looking cute in a bikini top and the sarong she'd bought at a market on Malé, sitting across from Grace Dobosu or her flight school crush or even the dumb Marine—it didn't matter.

Burnham laughed a little stiffly. "Sucrose is an intoxicant on the Vulcan physiology. S'mores would have made those survival courses…unique, shall we say?"

"So, you never had sugar when you were a kid?" To Keyla, a woman raised in the land of sweets and chocolate, this was akin to not having oxygen.

"I had my first taste of chocolate when we docked at Starbase 23, seven months after I transferred aboard _Shenzhou_. I thought I had an orgasm."

Keyla laughed, covering her mouth. "You were a deprived child." Burnham laughed too. Keyla went back to her rations, pulled away from Villamendhoo, and for a moment dropped back on the _Shenzhou_ , back when things were better.


	10. Chapter 10

_Old Scars_

When they finished their dinners, there was little left to do in the small shelter. They took turns trying to raise the _Discovery,_ but had no more luck than when they'd first tried. Burnham used the topographical data from her tricorder to sketch a crude map on the back of a ration wrapper.

"This is us," she told Detmer and pointed to a drawing of a bubble. "If I'm reading the data right, the river stretches this way—west then south, so that puts us on this edge. Now the camp is over here…"

"What is this?" Detmer asked, pointing to a label on the map.

Burnham looked confusedly to where she was pointing. "What?"

"This…this here," Detmer's finger slid beneath the letters.

"That says 'river.'"

"Oh," Detmer blushed lightly and looked down self-consciously. She didn't have a face that could hide anything, Burnham thought.

"It's a label."

"Right, I get it. It's just…I can't really read handwriting anymore," she said it almost as a question. "The interface," she tapped the plastisteel affixed to her skull, "it can't decipher it."

"Oh," Burnham said softly.

"It can recognize printed symbols twenty times faster than the human brain, but dot an i with a smiley face and it's stumped." She gave a wan smile.

"Corbin—the tech at Starfleet Medical who monitors my progress—he's been working on an upgrade for that, but apparently it's pretty tough. Computers can be stubbornly dumb about some things."

"Yeah," Burnham said, rattled. "Well…here's the mining camp. If we just keep heading east we'll hit some portion of it."

"And then what?"

"We figure that out when we get there."

"You'll understand if I'm terribly optimistic about our chances."

"I understand," Burnham said, hearing her voice slip into her First Officer cadence despite herself. "But the first rule of survival is to keep a positive mental attitude."

Detmer stared at her. "I haven't had a positive mental attitude in a long time."


	11. Chapter 11

_Shields Failing_

Later, when they were in their thermal sleeping pouches, Burnham looked over at the indistinct lump that was Detmer, tinted blue in the dying glow of the chem-stick they'd used for light, and felt a stab of envy. Here, alone and far from home, she could understand the appeal of having another body beside her as she slept, and she wished that she had Detmer's confidence and faculty with such matters. For Burnham—who'd never truly been in love and barely had a sexual history to speak of—the process of courtship was like being dropped into a conversation when you didn't know the language. She wondered of Detmer knew how fortunate she was. Probably not.

"Keyla?" she asked.

"No, I wasn't trying to sleep or anything. I'm actually just sitting here working on my novel."

"How did you know I like my food spicy?"

"What, you think I'm some kind of alien shapeshifter? Or that this is all some kind of elaborate hologram, and that you're actually aboard a Klingon ship and they're testing you to see how humans deal with stress?"

Now that she mentioned it, it _was_ a plausible scenario.

"The Loy Krathong party Mike Turner threw for us right after he got transferred to the _Shenzhou_. About a year and a half, two years ago, remember?"

Burnham let out a small laugh. "Oh god, _yes_! He made a whole Thai banquet…"

"And damn near overloaded the environmental systems, because they stopped filtering the fumes from all those Thai chilis."

"The environmental systems always had problems," Burnham mused, remembering how the small, tidy cabin had become translucent with steam from the wok and the acrid scent of chilis frying in oil.

"It was an old ship. And remember that cadet who was on night watch got a dose of it through the vents and stumbled into sickbay, his eyes were watering and he was hysterical…he thought we had a coolant leak." Detmer laughed.

"And Turner had made seafood drunken noodles. He said it was extra spicy..."

 _"'_ Heroically spicy', I believe were his words. 'No mere _hoo-man_ not of Thai origin can withstand it.' And then you ate, like an entire platter of it."

"It wasn't that much," Burnham said defensively.

"It was several platefuls."

"I don't think it was that much."

"All the junior officers discussed it at length in the chowhall the next day. We were all duly impressed."

"I recall it differently."

Detmer continued, "And you mentioned to him that Vulcan tastebuds are wired differently than human's, so their food is much spicier and has much more aggressive flavors—I remembered you used that term 'aggressive flavors,' I'd never heard that before—than most human cuisines."

"Hm, I'd forgotten about that," Burnham said, her eyes, closed, her mind taking her back to the cramped, worn cabins and berths of the _Shenzhou_. "I remember Saru—Saru, of all people—brought that Kelpien bisque. It was bright blue."

"Ugh, yes. It was, like their version of plankton or something. Smelled like a sea lion carcass."

"It was good, though."

"You _ate_ it?"

Burnham gave a little shrug, then remembered that Detmer couldn't really see her in the fading light. "I'm a scientist. I explore new things."

"No, I mean after you ate your body weight in drunken noodles, you could still pack away Saru's Cerulean Sludge?"

Burnham laughed.

"And not put on any weight. As always. You bitch."

"Where did Turner end up? I know he transferred to the _Europa_ for a TDY, but I don't know what his final assignment was."

"The _Manitowoc_ ," Detmer said. "He went into the command track."

"You keep in touch?"

"Off and on."

They settled into silence and their own personal reveries. Burnham thought of her conversation with Captain Georgiou the next day, when she had explained to Burnham why she'd only stayed for one small plate of fried rice. "The captain can't overstay their welcome. They must attend to show respect and gratitude for the invitation, stay long enough to be a presence, and then leave early to allow the crew to have fun. Otherwise, it quickly becomes a work event, and people can't relax and be their truest selves."

It was another lesson in humanity from Georgiou for which Burnham was eternally grateful.

After a moment she heard Keyla sob. "Damn you," the woman said quietly in the darkness. "I hate you so much for taking that away."


	12. Chapter 12

_Cold Light of Day_

The next morning, they spent an hour repacking their survival equipment and fighting the shelter back into its compact, portable form, while the morning sun shone weakly through dun-colored clouds.

The tension had returned along with Keyla's sense of self-loathing. She regretted crying in front of Burnham, no matter how richly the woman deserved to see the pain that she caused. Burnham wasn't entitled to see her grief.

They trudged down to the river, before stopping at the bank and eating the remainder of their rations and the last trickles of water. "This should have lasted us longer," Burnham said.

"Well, it didn't," Keyla responded, angrily. "This wasn't supposed to be survival trek, remember?"

"If we move quickly we can make it to the edge of the mining camp by evening."

"And then what?" Keyla asked sharply. "We can't very well blend into the population, since if we get caught we'll be turned over the Klingons, and the best plan you have is to meet some guy and hope he has a way to contact another guy who can call the _Discovery_. That's not a plan, that's a statement of belief."

"It's what we have right now," Burnham said with her Vulcan-lite dispassion. "It's what we hold on to until we find a new option. But we keep going. We have to keep going."

In Keyla's ears the attempt at rousing her spirits was as plastic as the shelter. Disgustedly, she pulled her canteen out of her ruck, half-considered throwing it at Burnham. "Well, I'm not going anywhere choking out from thirst." She dipped the canteen in the rushing putty-colored water, then pulled it out and shook it vigorously until the filtration microbes in the lining kicked in.

"Keyla, you can't drink that," Burnham said concernedly. "This river isn't clean."

"No kidding, you mean water isn't supposed to be earth-toned? I _know_ it's not clean, but the filters will sift all that out."

"The waste matter and organic contaminants, yes," Burnham said, "but it can't filter out the chemicals toxins and radiation. If you drink that it will make you sick."

Keyla slumped and almost threw the canteen in frustration, then straightened up. "Screw it. I'll take my chances."

"It'll increase your blood toxicity, causing your kidneys to shut down!" Burnham placed her hand on Keyla's wrist. "After that you only have days before you're dead."

Keyla recoiled as if burnt. "I don't _care!_ At this point I just want not to be thirsty and dehydrated. Then, when we get to the camp— _if_ we get to the camp—and I kack, you can dump me in a waste-fill someplace."

Burnham's features flexed, then hardened, and Keyla instinctively understood that she'd revealed too much, and what was coming wouldn't be stopped. "You don't mean that."

Keyla laughed bitterly. "I think it's a fairly likely scenario, given who I'm with."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Isn't that how it always works with you? The Universe decides to punish you and everyone else pays the price. You get walk around with your perpetually-wounded attitude, but it's always other people who die."

Burnham's eyes flashed, and Keyla felt a moment of panic as her reptile brain recognizing the micro-expressions presaging an attack. Her hands twitched upward, but she pushed down the urge.

"If you think _for a moment_ that I wouldn't trade places with them—that I wouldn't give anything to have Captain Georgiou or the people we lost on the _Shenzhou_ or…or _my parents_ for god's sake—don't you think I would do anything to fix this? All of this? Keyla, there's nothing I wouldn't do to put the things back the way they were. Anything to make the pain go away." Burnham's eyes glistened even in the dull light of the pollution-filtered sun, and her expression was the most openly, nakedly vulnerable Keyla had ever seen. She could see Commander Burnham in that face—the ramrod-straight, frighteningly competent first officer-but only flashes.

"But if blaming me, if hating me, if that helps you grieve, then I guess that's what you have to do. But two of us double the chances of getting off this rock alive, so you need to be alive and functional. Do you understand?"

Keyla pursed her lips, tried to find some new vein of anger or pain to tap into and vent at Burnham, but she was increasingly aware of the moral high ground disappearing from beneath her feet like sand pulled out by the tide.

"Just don't ever forget how easily you got off, Michael. I had to learn how to read again." She stuffed her canteen in her ruck.

Burnham composed herself and looked liked she was about say something, when her communicator chirped.

"Is it the _Discovery?_ "

Burnham pulled out the communicator and flipped it open. "No. It's a signal from nearby."


	13. Chapter 13

_Didn't See That Coming_

They flattened on the packed, hardened earth just behind the edge of what seemed to be a semi-natural berm, which overlooked a series of interlocking vast flat constructed platforms. "Landing platforms, if I've ever seen one." Detmer said, as Burnham adjusted her binoculars and then swept the area.

"What do you see?"

"Not as much as I'd like," Burnham answered as she tried to make out the range scale on the bottom of her vision. "You know for advanced a ship as the _Discovery_ is, the Starfleet quartermasters really hsort-changed us when it comes to expeditionary equipment. I think these binoculars are from the Romulan War.

"Can you see a transmitter?"

"No, and these stupid things don't have a signal-visualization mode or any connectivity with the tricorders." She toggled the three-dimensional view, zooming in and out, searching for anything that might indicate the array and power source necessary for a subspace signal. "It's like we're in the Stone Age," she griped as she switched to a MGRS overlay and found the rendezvous point. She memorized the numbers, lowered the binoculars and punched the coordinates into her tricorder.

"Okay, we know where the signal is telling us to go, and it looks like we're clear in if we approach from the west side of that lower platform. There's a gate in the perimeter wall, which looks open."

"So we're just going to stroll on in," Detmer said skeptically.

"All of the activity is on the opposite end where it joins with the rest of the camp."

"This all sounds like a plan that ends with us being eaten by Klingons, you realize that, don't you?"

Burnham gave a half-shrug. "It's that or we camp out in the dead woods some more."

"Good point."

They half-slid, half-ran down the steep side of the berm, plumes of calcified top soil creating a low fogbank around their ankles until they reached the flattened ground which led to the perimeter wall, which, up close, was simply a series of pre-fab polymer slabs dug into the ground. A formidable keep, this was not, Burnham though.

The gate was set up to be a Controlled Access Center—heavy, blast-proof doors, opened into a smallish man-trap, which should have been controlled by a guard on duty and now was left wide open. Burnham held her phaser at low ready as they slowly, quietly walked through it, noting the sensors dotting the walls around them.

"Those must be switched off," she observed.

"What would the point be in rolling out the red carpet just to capture us on the inside?"

"That's what I'm hoping."

They dashed across a small, open area to a narrow alley between two tall pre-fab buildings. Despite the desperation of their situation, Burnham's Vulcan-trained curiosity couldn't help but assert itself. The whole environment felt artificial, she noted, as if the entire complex had been replicated as a piece by an industrial-model replication printer and pressed into the sick planet's crust by the hand of a giant child. The buildings, walkways, equipment areas, all seemed to have come from the same mold. She wondered what it said about Klingon industry. It was very different from the environment aboard the Sarcophagus ship, which seemed almost to have built by hand like a Medieval cathedral. Was this disposability a result of the tenants of a different a distinct Klingon house, or was this how they spread their Empire over their conquered worlds?

"About a hundred meters northwest," Detmer read off the tricorder. Burnham flattened against a wall and peered out of the alley. No one was around. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes and zoomed in on the area, peering through a gap between a low building and a pile of crates. It was a cargo area, she could tell, littered with crates and conex boxes and equipment.

"Looks clear all the way, but stay close to me just in case."

"Like I'm gonna wander off?"

Burnham bolted from the alley, phaser held out before her, looking through the holographic sights at the complex beyond. They cleared the empty expanse in seconds, and ducked between two conex boxes stacked in neat, horizontal lines. Detmer reached to open the tricorder, but Burnham placed her hand over the device's hood and shook her head. She didn't want the machine's characteristic noises to give away their position. Detmer nodded her understanding.

She flattened against the smooth, plastic wall of the cones and sidled to the edge and peered around it.

She saw a Starfleet shuttlecraft landed snugly amid stacks of cargo containers and a figure in nondescript coveralls standing in front of it, operating a communicator.

Sorensen.

Burnham scrambled from between the conex boxes, all her exhaustion and discomfort swept away by the adrenaline rush of seeing deliverance parked so close. Behind her, she heard Detmer heave a great sigh of relief.

"Commander!" she called. "Thank god you're here. Where's Conn'klyn? Did he make it?"

Sorensen looked up from his communicator with an expression Burnham couldn't read. Confusion, then alarm flashed across his features, then thought.

"You were supposed to be alone," he said.

"Our shuttle went down."

He nodded. "We can still make this work." He closed his communicator and stowed it one of the coverall's pockets. Then he looked at Detmer. "Lieutenant, I'm going to need your help in salvaging this thing.

"Anything you need," Detmer's voice was as firm and confident as if she were on the bridge of the _Discovery_ acknowledging an order from Captain Lorca.

"I'm glad to hear that. Will you check the shuttle's nav system?"

"Yes sir," she bounded past him to the shuttle.

"What about Conn'klyn?" Burnham asked, suddenly feeling useless.

Sorensen cocked his head. "Conn'klyn's been dead for weeks. He got burned by the Noviani Security Division. They killed him to appease the Klingons."

Burnham suddenly felt light-headed and wondered for a brief, vertiginous moment if she wasn't hallucinating this whole exchange while she actually lay dying in the wreckage of the shuttlecraft somewhere. "What? I don't understand? We were supposed to—"

"This was never about Conn'klyn," Sorensen said, then drew his phaser and shot her.


	14. Chapter 14

_The Wolf I Chose to Feed_

Keyla let out a short cry—almost a yelp—but not a scream. Her brain felt short-circuited by the information and the seeming lag in processing it.

She saw Sorensen raise his arm, holding something in his hand—

 _-phaser!—_

-saw the weapon's emitter cone rotate to the desired setting…

But Keyla didn't see any targets. They weren't taking fire. There were no armor-clad Klingon warriors storming the cargo area. Who…?

Then she heard the wicked hiss of the phaser, caught the flash on her retinas, and through the afterimage, saw Burnham collapse amid a cloud of black smoke.

She cried out when the acrid stench of burning flesh touched her nostrils.

Burnham did scream. It was a wail of indescribable pain that was a dart straight to Keyla's fight-or-flight instinct. She bounded out of the shuttlecraft to Sorensen. On the ground, three meters away from him, Burnham writhed in agony. Keyla saw blackened flesh and muscle, and the bright white of bone. She fought the urge to vomit.

"We need to go," Sorensen said dispassionately. As if that was an acceptable response to the situation.

 _"_ _What the fuck did you do?"_ Keyla screamed.

"This is on her!" Sorensen shouted back, facing Keyla with a mask of murderous rage. "This is what she gets for getting Philippa killed!"

Keyla suddenly felt cold and noticed that even Burnham was looking at the intelligence operative quizzically.

"What? Captain Georgiou? Who…?"

"She was getting promoted," he spat. "A program management job in Starfleet Headquarters. Be _grounded_ for the first time. She was looking forward to it. To having a permanent address. To being able to build a life together. We bought a damn brownstone…"

It hit Keyla like gut-punch: Captain Georgiou, always so cagey about what she did on her R&Rs. Always referring vaguely to "meeting friends," or "spending some time with someone I haven't seen in a while," before she deflected the question back with a quick, pert, "and what did _you_ get up to, Ensign?" Of course the lower decks assumed she had a lover—some guessed it was another starship captain, while others romantically imagined they were on Earth, looking up at the stars, pining for her. Jira Narwani stuck to her theory that Burnham was actually the captain's secret paramour, and that they only allowed themselves to succumb to their feelings when they off the ship ("you'd be amazed at what I can see through that targeting helmet. There's more repression on that bridge than a Victorian novel.")

And here was the mystery, solved.

"So this was all just a ruse to kill her?" Keyla asked. Stated aloud, the situation went back to not making sense.

"Well, Starfleet decided to pardon her. What the hell was I supposed to do? Let her live? Let her be free and happy? Not a fucking chance! If the Federation wasn't going to punish her, then I'd just have to take care of it."

"But…why go through all this just to kill her?"

"Not kill me," Burnham gasped. "Hand me over to the Klingons."

Keyla's eyes widened. "Is that true?"

"Almost," Sorensen said. "The Klingons would make too much hay with you as a prisoner. Plus there's always the off-chance you'd be rescued or repatriated when we win this war. Nope. I'm leaving you for the Orions."

"Orions?"

"The Novianis use them as a cut-out when they sell slaves to the Klingon Empire—something about taking slaves offends the Klingon's sense of honor, but I guess buying them is totally hunky-dorkey. They'll sell you to the Orion slave traders, Burnham. And then you'll make some Orion captain a fine concubine. Or maybe you'll spend the rest of your misery-filled existence servicing the miners in this place. The brothels always need fresh talent. You won't be in Starfleet anymore, but you will get to be of _service_ again."

Keyla felt the urge to vomit again.

"How could she have loved you?" Burnham spat, still writhing on the ground. "How could she have loved a man who would do something like this?"

 _"_ _She loved you!"_ he shouted and leveled the phaser again. For a split-second—a horrific eternity—Keyla thought he was going to use the heat setting on her face. "She loved you like you were a daughter—and believe me that was a special place in her heart. And you _betrayed_ her!"

"I tried to save her!"

"Only after you set the house on fire! You created that shitshow that got eight thousand people killed and you served less time in jail than a data smuggler. How is that justice? This is justice," he gestured with the phaser.

Before she could think, Keyla had pulled the small, Type-1 phaser from her back pocket and pointed it at Sorensen's throat. "This is over."

The man's eyes widened, but his phaser didn't move. "What are you doing?"

"This is finished," Keyla said firmly. "You're going to hand me the phaser and then we're getting into that shuttle and getting the hell out of Dodge before the locals show up. "

"I wasn't going to hurt _you_ ," Sorensen said. "Just her. You understand what she did. You…I mean, look at what she did to you!"

Keyla felt a sudden flash of anger and defensiveness, as if she was a little girl again and a classmate was trying to take her favorite toy starship away from her In this case it was a half-bald head and some hardware wired into her brain, but the reaction was the same: _This is mine, not yours!_ "She didn't do anything to me. The Klingons did. And she didn't do anything to Captain Georgiou—the Klingons did that too. Whatever you're feeling, it doesn't entitle you to do this in her name. Do it for yourself, if you want, but you will not disrespect my captain by pretending this in any way honors her! And if I have to press this trigger-button and turn you into a luau torch, so help me I'll do it. Because Captain Georgiou didn't leave anyone behind, and neither will I."

Something broke in Sorensen's eyes, and the phaser dropped to point at the ground. He nodded, his eyes focused in middle-distance, just nodded.

Then the alarms went off.


	15. Chapter 15

_To the Limit_

"Oh shit!" Sorensen's head snapped up. "They must have detected the phaser fire! Get the shuttle ready!"

"I'm not so sure we should split up," she said acidly.

"Look we—" And then the conversation became moot as ugly red disruptor bolts lashed out from between the cargo containers and ripped holes in the shuttle's hull. Keyla saw green coolant and greyish plasma leak from the nacelles.

Sorensen returned fire, quick well-aimed shots intended to hold back the indistinct figures in combat armor.

"You gotta go! There are atmospheric hoppers on the other side of the platform." He pointed the direction, and Keyla saw beyond a wall of cargo containers about a hundred meters away, three hunched atmospheric vehicles parked in a row. "I'll hold them off, go!"

Keyla bolted over to Burnham's side, ignored the air sizzling around her with disruptor fire, and pulled the injured woman's around her shoulders. "On your feet, Specialist Burnham." She grabbed Burnham's dropped Type-2 phaser, then stood, pushing with her knees, dragging Burnham's body with her. The woman grunted in pain. "You can do this."

"Keyla, I'll slow you down…"

"Come on, Lorca will have my ass if I don't come home with you. And not in a good way."

"Do you have a filter?"

"Step with your functioning leg. We can do this, come on!"

Together they hobbled-an ungainly lurching movement, but a quick one—into the maze of cargo containers with the sound of furious combat behind them. Keyla spared a look back, and saw Sorensen kneeling behind the nose of the shuttle trading fire with a half dozen Noviani security personnel.

Keyla half-supported, half-dragged Burnham through the cargo crates to the open, flat landing platform and the hoppers, then stopped short. A team of five Noviani security guards were filing in from the opposite side of the platform. She tried to curse, but a crackling disruptor bolt flashed past her and burned a chunk out of the nearest cargo container. She ducked back into the safety of the containers and let Burnham drop.

"Sorry, but I have to take care of this."

"Keyla…"

But she'd already ducked out from behind the cover of the containers.

When they installed the hardware, Keyla Detmer's whole life changed. Some for the worse—the scars, the loss of her hair, a new eye that was the wrong color—but some for the better.

Her hand-eye coordination, for example.

Interfacing with a computer, her optical/motor interaction increased 388% by Corbin's latest estimation, and that helped when it came to things like shooting.

The last time she requalified on the phaser course, the Small Arms Training Unit didn't have a scale high enough to score her.

The Novianis never stood a chance.

Five precise shots in slightly over a second, and they were all stunned into submission. Keyla slid back behind cover and reached out to Burnham. "Come on. Almost there."

"What was that?"

"I'm good with a phaser. Come on."

Together they lurched into the small craft. Burnham fell into the co-pilot' seat like a sack of rocks. Keyla surveyed the controls, felt a surge of satisfaction that this craft was a bog-standard atmospheric transport. She could fly this. Damn thing even had control sticks ( _like any proper craft should!_ she thought) _._

"Here we go," she keyed the anti-gravs and worked the sticks, getting used to the pitch and yaw. The ship wobbled some. She had surprisingly sensitive controls.

"Look!" Burnham said, slightly out-of-breath and pointing. Keyla saw the landing pad falling away, the view expanding, and Sorensen still fighting his doomed holding action by the now-burning shuttle. Figures moved in. There was a flash, and the whole shuttle erupted into plasma flame like a burning geyser.

Keyla looked away. She didn't need to think about another bad ending. Michael looked away too, pulling out her communicator and fiddling with the controls in front of her.

"I'm going to try and link my communicator with the ship's comm system. Maybe it'll boost it through the atmosphere."

"Sounds good," Keyla threw a look over at the injured woman. Her leg looked simply ghastly, and Burnham's hands were shaking. She'd go into shock soon—she had to in order to live—and Keyla saw the window for their survival closing fast.

"There's a thermal blanket lashed to the wall," Keyla pointed. "Why don't you pull it over you. You're losing heat with that injury."

"Right," Burnham answered sluggishly. She was blacking out. Keyla grabbed the oxygen mask from beside the pilot's seat and affixed it over Burnham's nose and mouth, felt it seal to her skin. "What are you doing?" her voice was muffled and mumbled.

"The only thing that can guarantee the signal gets out," Keyla answered, then angled the ship upwards and gunned the engines. The hopper rose like rocket, punching through the thick cover of poisonous clouds and layers of dust until they all fell away like a silk robe off a nude body, and Keyla saw stars out the cockpit windows.

The heat dissipated almost instantly, and Keyla began to shudder, her breath steaming in the rapidly-thinning air. Burnham didn't speak, just stared at her intensely, imploringly _Take the ship back down! Don't do this!_

Keyla held her gaze until her body tingled and the darkness took her.


	16. Chapter 16

_Recovery_

Keyla Detmer dreamed she was in the chowhall on the _Shenzhou_ sitting across one of the small, plastic tables from Jira Narwani. Both of them had trays of food, which was strange since the tactical officer wore her huge, snail shell targeting helmet.

"Why are you wearing that thing? You're not on the bridge."

"It's my face," Jira answered impassively.

"No, it's that goofy-ass helmet you have to wear because this ship pre-dates three-D tactical panels. Now take it off, you're weirding me out."

"It's my face it's who I am."

"No, it's not. You're Jira Narwani, former Miss Bangalore, tactical officer of the _USS Shenzhou_ , crush object for most of the crew, and a really great karaoke singer. Now take that thing off. Your mystery meat is getting cold."

"It's what I want to be."

"Whatever. I'm drinking your protein shake."

"And it's who you want to be, too."

Keyla felt an icicle of terror stab her in the heart, and a moment later she was falling upward into light.

* * *

"There we go," Doctor Culber said in his typically soothing voice as he held the medical diagnostic wand over her head. "Come on back to us, Lieutenant."

Keyla gradually aware of her surroundings: sickbay. A diagnostic bed. Around her monitors chirped and sighed as if in encouragement.

"What…" her throat burned and she paused, tried to work up saliva, but Culber handed her a straw-topped bottle instead.

"Here, drink that before you try and talk again. It's a regenerative shake. Your throat was a little frostbitten, like your hands and face."

Keyla suddenly noticed the hot prickly sensation on her flesh. She looked at her hand, and saw that it was a fading red. She slurped the drink. It was milky and sweet.

"You're lucky we found you when we did," Doctor Culber continued. "You were oxygen-deprived, but not enough to cause brain-damage."

Keyla spat out the straw. "Nice change of pace," she rasped.

Culber smiled. "Your voice will come back in a little time, but you both soaked up a lot of radiation and toxins on that planet, so we have you on an anti-rad IV drip that we'll have to keep you on for another few days."

"Burnham?" Keyla asked. Culber smiled and took a step back. Behind him, Keyla saw Burnham stretched out in the next bed, a regenerative cuff wrapped around her leg. She looked wan and haggard, her face a dull greyish color. Here eyes were alert, though. Alert and concerned.

"Keyla!" She said with as much energy as her weakened frame seemed to allow. "Thank god you're awake. I was worried you'd never…" but then she seemed to stop herself and try and erect the controlled, composed façade of the Michael Burnham the rest of the world knew.

Doctor Culber looked at the two of them, somewhat uncomfortably, then, with his characteristic grace backed out from between the beds with a knowing smile. "I'll leave you two to get caught up, now. Keyla, if you need more regenerative shake, just press the nurse-call number." And then he was gone, and it was just the two of them.

"How's the leg?" Keyla rasped.

"They're rebuilding it. Doctor Culber says it should only be a week or so for full regeneration, then another week of so of limping until the muscle builds up again…" Burnham's eyes became concerned again.

"Thank you, Keyla, for saving my life. You were…incredibly brave. Captain Georgiou would have been proud."

Keyla felt her eyes sting. "Michael," she said with difficulty, "I'm not sure if I forgive you, but I'm done hating you."

Burnham's eyes glittered. "Thank you."

Keyla knew instinctively that she had to say something, do something, to break this mood, this tension between them. She could feel something moving beneath the surface of their words, something unexpected and uncontrollable. So, she looked at the ceiling and said, "I should break it off with Tilly before things get out of hand."

"She came by while you were still in coma. She was with Ensign Lomax."

"The twerpy little guy from stellar cartography?"

"Cried on his shoulder and everything."

Keyla laughed through her ravaged throat. "I must be really easy to get over."

"I wouldn't take it personally," Burnham smiled.

"Well, there are the ones you wed and the ones you bed. Guess I know where I land on that spectrum."

"It was almost three full days. She had to move on at some point."

They laughed and joked a while longer, until the ship's lighting faded to "twilight" setting, and Burnham's energy faded. Keyla watched her. She rolled on her side and watched Burnham sleep, until it took her too.


End file.
